Shadowmancer (The Circle Book 1)

by Lee Isserow

  A big, beaming smile made its way across the exhausted boy's face at the mention of Kahgo. He was often the hero of these stories retold from his grandmother, and Natan was his biggest fan. Jules had felt exactly the same way when he was Natan's age, and the stories were being told to him. Kahgo always had a steely reserve, never felt fear or anxiety. No matter how big the threat was, whether it was national, international or interdimensional, he always jumped straight into the fray, with a cool head and calm manner. He was never reckless, but his own safety was secondary to others, to the point of nearing self-sacrifice at times. And whenever he was relied upon to save the world, he was victorious.

  “The Circle called for Shaman Kahgo, and as always, he answered their call. With words whispered by Three, they sent him straight to the source of the magickal vibrations coming off the ritual.”

  Another simplification. In the original story Jules was told, Kahgo was teleported thirteen miles away from the focal point of the vibrations. And technically, they weren't magical vibrations, but in fact undulations in the fabric of reality that emanated out from the site of the ritual.

  “And he tricked the great beast into entering an enchanted oil lamp.”

  The truncated ending of the tale was Jules's doing, rather than his grandmother's. When she first told him the tale, when he was not much older than Natan, she went into excruciating detail into the method by which the djinn was captured. 'Tricking' was not far off, but it was a little more complicated than that, as the real-world basis for fairy tales often are. When Shaman first faced the djinn, after traversing thirteen miles of desert, he was well aware that it was foolhardy to attack a false god from beyond the realms with a direct approach. Instead, he offered him a bounty, as a show of respect for the interdimensional traveller. The creature had been intending to rip the world apart into its raw elements and reconstitute it in its own image, so he provided it with the most powerful of raw elements he could gain access to at the time; Plutonium.

  The djinn, greedy for power, saw the element for what it was, a source of powerful destruction that could aid him in a swifty desolation of the planet, and he accepted with glee. It was only when he laid his hands upon it and inspected closely that he saw the symbols etched into the rock at a cellular level, but by that point it was too late. As he had no body, no physical form, his entire essence was sucked deep into the core of the plutonium. Shaman then transubstantiated it into the innocuous brass of an oil lamp, relieving it of its radioactive properties, and cast incantations over it to insure nobody would ever release the djinn by simply rubbing it and accidentally casting the sigil.

  “And there he remains to this day, until some poor fool makes the terrible decision to recite a releasing incantation whilst rubbing the lamp and casting the sigil to let it free.”

  In fact, there were several follow-up stories Jules had been told in which the djinn escaped on a number of occasions. But on each of those, it was much weaker than in its initial battle with Shaman Kahgo, and he had no trouble locking it back in its box.

  Natan stirred calmly in the bed. “Where's the lamp now?” he asked, in a quiet, sleepy voice.

  “It's in the Circle, of course. Guarded under the watchful eye of all the greatest magickians in the lands.” Jules said, as he ran a hand through his son's hair. The boy was close to passing out, and he took to his feet to leave him to his slumber.

  “More!” the boy grumbled.

  Jules sat back down and smiled. He didn't mind this, retelling the stories of his boyhood hero. It was certainly better than re-reading the damn Aladdin book. And as much as he hated to admit it, he relished the opportunity to return to a childlike state vicariously, revelling in the glory of the man his grandmother just wouldn't shut the hell up about for the best part of his childhood.

  7

  Hiding in plain sight

  It took two more paraphrased stories until Natan finally gave in to the exhaustion and allowed himself to be swept out with the tide of slumber. Jules waited a good ten minutes to be sure. He still had a plenty of stories he could pull out if so required, and was actually a little sad to discover that the boy was indeed asleep.

  “Another time...” he whispered to the child, stepping towards the door. He wondered if he was doing his grandmother a disservice by not telling the fables of Shaman Kahgo and the Circle with more fervour. When she had originally regaled him with the stories, she was both eloquent and animated, she'd do voices, mime out actions, put some magick into the retelling. That was part of why they stuck with him all this time, he reckoned. Whether his more subtle, or lazy, recanting would have as much impact on Natan he couldn't say. Children are so fickle, he reminded himself. He grew up in a time, in a place, in an income bracket when entertainment was somewhat limited. They didn't even have a television when he was a kid, let alone hundreds, if not thousands of cable stations. His imagination was the only retreat, and the tales of Kahgo were seeds for a myriad tales of his own devising, all the way through to adolescence. When he became a teenager that changed drastically, and the Shaman stories all but ceased to exist in his memories, until he and 'Kif had Natan, at which point he found himself wanting the tell all the stories he could think of. There were so many, and he wanted their child to have the free, playful imaginative childhood he had had.

  In comparison, Akif's childhood was so dull. The way he talked about it made it sound like it was all shot in black and white, with Koran studies taking up a large portion of the days, and the nights spent reflecting on whatever was studied during the day. There was obviously more to it than that, but that simplification was the major bullet points of his husband's formative years. Jules thought that he had turned out remarkably well-rounded for someone with such a strict upbringing. But then again, he too had technically had a fairly rigid structure to his childhood, albeit with more counter-culture civil rights teachings from his grandmother, who claimed to have been friends with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. He didn't know whether that was true, and doubted it for the most part. But whether she exaggerated her social standing in the civil rights movement or not, it was undeniable that there were some things she had taught him that stuck fast.

  “He go down okay?” 'Kif asked, as Jules joined him on the couch, nuzzling into the crook of his neck

  “Like a lead balloon struggling to stay afloat... Got there eventually.”

  “Little Mermaid again?”

  “Aladdin.”

  “Which you segued into...”

  “Kahgo and the djinn.”

  “You can't keep telling him those stories.” He chuckled, holding Jules close. The laugh was an affectation, rather than actually finding the situation amusing. He had genuine concerns regarding the tales Jules told. “One day, when he's in school, he'll try and bring them up to other kids , y'know? Talk about them like they're pop culture.”

  “Really? You think that's the biggest problem he'll face at school? Having the wrong references is probably the least of the worries a mixed race kid from beige and black dads is going to have...”

  “It won't make things any easier...”

  “Nothing will...” Jules said, with a sigh. He had been fortunate enough to grow up in a tight-knit community, never had to go through any discrimination until he ventured out as a teen, where he discovered just how much the outside world seemed to judge him for such aesthetic reasons. 'Kif's concerns were coming from his own experience, spending his life in London being 'the other'. It didn't help that he had turned twenty around the time of the attacks in New York, and was twenty four by the time it was London's turn to open the door on the terrorism advent calender. He looked like one of them, the bombers. Not actually like one of them, but his olive completion and facial hair and wearing a taqiya didn't help. It was that experience that made him hide his faith, eventually made him lose his faith. With a shave, a new hairstyle and different fashion choices he could easily be mistaken for Greek or Italian, and that was the path he went down. Hiding in p
lain sight.

  “You going to check out what that job was about?” 'Kif asked.

  “I don't know... not sure I trust recruiters that turn up like door-to-door salesmen.”

  “The must really want you, right? Did they say who they worked for?”

  “No.” Jules had an inkling, but Akif wouldn't understand. “That's what's putting me off. It's all too weird.”

  “You want to talk weird? You tell our son stories you heard from your grandmother, who's a hundred and thirty seven, and shows no signs of being even close to slowing down...”

  Jules smiled. He had played down his grandmother's age when they first got to know each other close to a decade previous, taken a good chunk of years off the figure. He in no way expected to have to keep count of the fictional number he had told Akif for quite so long.

  “You know the oldest person that ever lived was only a hundred and twenty-two?”

  “Methuselah lived to nine hundred and sixty-something...”

  “Oldest real person...”

  “She was never much for records.”

  “You should give it a go.”

  “Living to one-thirty-seven?”

  “The job,” Akif said, the jovial spirit sapped from the air with his words. “At the very least you can just call them, go in for an interview, see what the job they're offering you actually entails. If you don't like it, you just say goodbye and walk on out the door. What's the worst that could happen?”

  Jules huffed and glanced over to the chewed-up card, sitting on the coffee table with circles of dry spittle on its surface. The fact that the type only raised and displayed information when Akif was out the room meant whatever this job was – whoever these people were – they were magickally inclined. He had always been taught to distrust any kind of organised group of magickians. Jules knew that given that fact, there were a myriad options for the worst that could happen. Of course, he couldn't tell Akif any of this. His husband, as wonderful as he was, had no magick flowing through his veins. He just wouldn't understand.

  8

  Londons of the past

  The address on the card was for an address on Mansion House Place. Jules had to Google for it, and pretty much all the relevant search results declared it as the home of the Lord Mayor of London. The ones that were less relevant were photos and listings for literal mansion houses for rent and lease. As far as Google Maps could offer, there did not seem to be any doors, let alone numbers on Mansion House Place, it seemed to be an alley that ran around the side and back of Mansion House itself. On the tube, Jules double checked that he was on the right route, and found himself bringing up maps of the area. Not present-day maps, but maps from iterations of Londons of the past. There was something about this location that made him feel uneasy. At that moment in time it was the centre of the banking sector, wherein resided RBS, The Bank Of England and so on. However, in times of yore, long before the city limits had expanded to the point that London had a population of nine million or more, the 'Bank' area was pretty much the dead centre of Roman Londinium. Something about it didn't sit right with him.

  Way back when he was a child, living with his grandmother in New Orleans, she'd tuck him in at night and weave tales of not only other-worldly creatures, but as cities themselves as living, breathing behemoths. In her stories of how they came to be, they were personified as sprawling organisms with an insatiable hunger, devouring surrounding land, whether it be empty green spaces or populated villages and towns. From New Amsterdam to Los Angeles, London to Moscow, their desire to feed was symbiotic with Man's desire for power, one fuelling the other, a synergy of greed and lust.

  According to her, there was always a focal point, unseen by all around, which was essentially the beating heart of a city. Most people would assume that the centre of that circulatory system would be based wherever the seat of power lay, whether it be government or royalty or dictator. Of course the old woman, contradictory as ever, did not believe that to be true. Man always built himself places of power, imbued with legitimacy via history and legend, built up over years of intent and purpose, but that was not true power. The focal points of a city were where the true power resided, often where businesses just so happened to have their headquarters built. Some of them even consulted with magickians in advance of seeking out land and planning permission, the same way they ran their logos past them to insure the sigils were going to encourage profits and success. Everything from the McDonald's arches to the Nike Swoosh had been magickally approved before it was officially adopted.

  Remembering this made Jules's head spin off in yet another direction; the second world war. His grandmother had told him that she and her friends had joined to fight the Nazis, not as troops, but as magickians working with their British counterparts from the home front, The Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley as their figurehead. Together, they enchanted the 'V' symbol as a counter-sigil to the Nazi's swastika and helped save the world from the Third Reich.

  Some of her stories Jules took with not just a pinch of salt, but the whole shaker.

  Getting back to his original train of thought, he could cite from memory a myriad examples of geographic focal points being misused by those seeking profit; Trump Tower was right above one in New York, the post profitable movie studios in Hollywood were all skirting the edges of focal point in Los Angeles, and in London's case one such point was where the Bank Of England was built. Not the original building, which for some reason Jules knew was adjacent to the ruins of a temple to the Roman god Mithra; the divinity guarding over such things as contracts, cattle and harvests. That was, if you were to ask any Bank historian, entirely coincidental. Yet more coincidence reigned when it was relocated some hundred or so years later to its current location on Threadneedle Street. Threadneedle, it is said, was named due to the street being the home to The Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, as tailors not only use needles, but often thread them. Others, more etymagickally inclined would say that it was a sigil that perverted the effete biblical verse 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God'. By corrupting and condensing that to simply Threadneedle, it became an enchantment designed to summon wealth forth, and damn the consequences.

  That was, at least, Jules's interpretation of events, as seen through the lens of his grandmother. The old woman was cynical to say the least. She had seen capitalism's rise across the world, watched it spread, watched men's hearts become corrupted by wealth or power. It happened time and time again, to people she never expected it to. It's what led her to pull away from the wider Magickal community. To live a simple life in New Orleans, and raise Jules to be outside of the sphere of influence too. She didn't want him to end up like so many others. “Y'got such a good heart,” she'd often say, “best be sure t'keep it that way. All too easy to take the wrong path, lose your footing and fall down that hole. An' once you start falling, ain't no stopping... 'Cept for the grave, a'course.”

  9

  White blood cells

  As a child, Jules loved her stories, and listened intently to all the wise words she had to offer, taking each perspicacious nugget to heart. However, some thirty years later, he saw the majority of her 'origins of cities' tales exactly for what they were; nothing but than the semi-philosophical ramblings of an old woman who had seen more than her fair share of countryside devoured by the expansion of capitalism.

  That said, as he got off the train at Temple Station to walk a circuitous route along to Bank, he found himself becoming a little too aware of London's evolution. Leaving the station he was faced with buildings old and new standing side by side, built a hundred or perhaps hundreds of years apart, yet homogenised to look practically identical. The mundane mind would likely not notice the difference between old and new, that was after all the intent behind the newer builds. However, his mind was far from mundane. As a fifth generation adept, he had a natural sense for old things, not simply because they were often ingrained or con
structed with magickal purpose. Not that such things were spoken about out loud, or always planned; even erecting a structure with superstitious workers (which tended to be more prominent in the past than the present) had a tendency to imbue the finished thing with a sense of that augur.

  It was not just the buildings that made him reconsider the disbelief in his grandmother's statements about cities. Walking through the small park outside the tube station, he couldn't help but notice the so-called 'preventative measures' that had been instated to make it harder for the homeless to congregate or sleep in the vicinity. Long, straight wooden benches had been replaced by curved benches, that had armrests every three to four feet to make it impossible for someone to lie down on them. Beneath them, vertical bars had been cemented to the ground at the front and back to prevent the rough sleepers from rolling under and using them as shelter from rain. Jules let an angry sigh out and sat on one of them, opening his arms wide across the curve of the bench, letting his fingers hang down behind the backrest, out of sight from passers by. Stretching them out wide, he took command of the shadows hiding under the bench, and with a subtle movement at the wrists turned them into dark, almost diaphanous hands that grabbed hold of the bars across the back of the bench. He listened to the traffic on the adjacent street, waiting for just the right moment. As a truck rolled on by, the hands wrenched the bars from the concrete that held them to the ground, and threw them into the bushes. The translucent limbs returned to their resting place under the bench, and Jules returned to his feet. It was a gesture, nothing more. Maybe no rough sleepers would even notice the bench had been sabotaged to allow them a place to lie out of the rain, but it felt like the least he could do.